Mike Tyson‘s career is full of light and shade, as one of the most fearsome heavyweight champions, but also with marked ups and downs that led him to the brink of losing everything. That is why his most recent fight against Jake Paulgenerated great expectations, even though his performance left much to be desired
Prior to the fight, many experts spoke of what ‘Iron Mike’‘s career was like in his prime, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he was considered invincible, someone few dared to face and even less to withstand his fury in the ring
One of them is contact sports commentator Joe Rogan, who even went further and assured that in the case of a hypothetical fight between Tyson in his prime and one of the most recognized champions of all time, Rocky Marciano, it would have been dominated by Tyson himself
And his comparison with Marciano is no small thing, as he retired as an undefeated champion in 1956, with a record of 49-0 with 43 knockouts. In fact, Muhammad Ali, considered ‘The Greatest’ of all time, once said of Marciano that he was “the hardest to beat”.
The crazy comparison between Mike Tyson and Rocky Marciano
The comparison occurred in the most recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he spoke with Cameron Hanes, a bowhunter and marathon runner.
The legend of Iron Mike Tyson
During the conversation, Hanes spoke of an old video with Marciano’s terrible training routines:
“He was sparring seven days a week, sometimes 30 or 40 rounds a day. He would run 10 miles in the morning and then another five miles at night, and then swim two miles in a lake. He would get up in the morning and do it all over again, and never took days off”.
The duo reflected on inspiring stories like Marciano’s, although they acknowledged that by modern standards, at 5′ 10″ and weighing between 188-192 pounds at his best, Marciano was a small heavyweight, capable of beating Joe Louis in his prime at Madison Square Garden
Marciano was an exception, as he beat some of the most important heavyweights of the time.
“Rocky Marciano is great, but Mike Tyson would have run him over like a train to a flock of sheep,” Rogan said. “It’s a different world. Rocky, at his maximum weight, weighed 192 pounds, although he fought seven boxers who weighed more than 200 pounds.”
In Tyson’s prime, he was not much bigger, weighing 220 pounds and standing 5’10”, the same height as Marciano.
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